During the AM2 board meeting on Jun 13, the board mentioned
that Coast to coast (the company that is painting and restoring our building,
known as CTC) discovered 3 post tension (PT) broken cables.
The broken cables were identified a year ago during the
restoration phase. CTC then offered to hire a sub-contractor that specializes
in replacing PT cables. Now, when the
restoration and painting is almost completed, a new company must be hired to
repair the PT cables. It will require braking/drilling into the finished
outside walls and hanging new scuffles (so they can reach the end of the PT
cables). After replacing the cables the wall will have to be restored and
painted again.
Most of this work would have been eliminated if the PT
cables were replaced while CTC was still restoring and painting the outside
walls and would have saved the community extra unnecessary expenses.
Why we have PT cables?
PT systems provide active reinforcement. The function of post-tensioning is to place the concrete structure under compression in those regions where load causes tensile stress. Post-tensioning applies a compressive stress on the material, which offsets the tensile stress the concrete might face under loading.
What is post-tensioning?
At its most basic level, post-tensioning (PT) is a fiendishly clever way of reinforcing concrete while you are building – occasionally even allowing the construction of something, which might otherwise have been impossible!
Sample of PT cables:
